


What Lies Between Them

by Valour (Reccea)



Category: Popslash
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-15
Updated: 2010-10-15
Packaged: 2017-10-12 16:41:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/126930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reccea/pseuds/Valour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two years has given Justin a successful solo career and a new famous girlfriend that he can parade around the world. Two years has given her several nervous breakdowns and the ability to finally say no to her mother.</p><p>It wasn't a fair trade but Justin's always been the lucky one, of the three of them. She doesn't complain though. She isn't sure that Chris has gotten off any better than she has.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Lies Between Them

.What lies between them.

.

They fight, of course. They always fight. This time, though, it's more vicious. This is saying things that they'd held back on saying even when they were falling to pieces. This is their relationship sliding past rock bottom.

Justin doesn't call her a slut, but he doesn't have to.

He just asks, his voice strangely hoarse, "You're having his baby?" and she hears what he isn't asking.

Her heart goes on a rapid beat and she feels more alive than she has in years, even though she's just bleeding out again. Britney hadn't thought she'd had anything left to bleed.

She wants to ask him about Cameron. Wants to ask about who Justin wasn't with. She wants to know if it has torn them apart the way it's torn her apart. Or if his ego has just finally gotten the better of him. She'd seen that coming years ago.

She doesn't ask any of it. She doesn't have the strength to say anything more than, "I can't do it again, Justin. I can't."

She thinks, maybe, that he's crying, but the phone line is too weak to tell and she can't read him anymore. She can't ask and he won't tell.

"I don't know what to say anymore," he manages to say.

It sounds final to Britney. It feels final but she knows it isn't. There is something in them that will never really let go.

..

They give her all the pictures they find, even though she's never once asked for them. She could never ask to see Cameron clamoring up his back, settling into her place better than Britney ever had. She hates Cameron, can't really help herself, but she hates Justin more. He just looks so fucking happy.

The pictures of the other guys come less frequently, Chris barely at all. But one of her assistants found a bootleg of his Dallas concert and left it for her.

Britney only got through it once and afterwards she locked it up. It's in the same safe with the pictures she actually took of them all and it's not a safe she ever lets herself open. She doesn't want to dwell on what's been left inside, been left behind.

She remembers the bootleg clearly though. The smooth sound of his voice made her belly ache and she knew she didn't have his forgiveness just by the way he said her name.  
…

Kevin didn't tell her about the girlfriend or the kids (one here and one on the way). Not at first. He did tell her before the tabloids did but it was kind of already too late. Britney knows she's a bitch for having stayed with him but she doesn't have much that makes her smile anymore.

Even if he doesn't make her smile quite half as much as they used to, or even half as easily. She's still not willing to give him up. A little is more than she'd been used to.

Her selfishness, she knows, is her worst feature.

….

She'd fucked up her knee. Yes, she'd cried but she couldn't stop herself. It wasn't what she wanted and nothing this year seems to be going as planned. On a fake rain slick street in nothing but her lingerie, filming a video for the album that had become the only thing she could manage to care about. She'd thought, of course. Of course.

Black trench coat and her underwear and she's broken for all the world to see and it's exactly what she deserves.

…..

Chris has only ever called her once since. One week after her famous annulment and he'd had to have known she'd have her cell turned off. He knew her too well to think otherwise.

He didn't identify himself, he didn't have to. Just said, "Don't pull a Marilyn Monroe on me, kid." She knew Lance must have talked but she didn't care. Lance was the only thing keeping them all together and he shared their secrets as much as he shared hers.

She saved the message, listened to it over and over for a month. His voice steadied the unstable beat of her heart.

She still listens to it every time she thinks about doing something stupid.

……

She got nervous about having JC on her tour. She wants him there, wants to give him what they'd given her in the beginning. Britney's sense of loyalty is better than what everyone thinks it is.

She was afraid because JC and Chris understood the same things about the world and she was sure—she was sure—JC hated her just as much as everyone else did.

She doesn't know what to do when JC pulls her close, hugs her tight, calls her honey. It isn't the same as it's always been but it's better than she deserves. And she feels almost whole again. Closer to herself than she's felt since Lance drove to Vegas to see her.

…….

"Britney, you can't do this." He's never spoken to her in that voice before.

But she doesn't have a choice. Her mother had made that clear. After the screaming that had been very clear. But he didn't see, of course he didn't see. Justin wouldn't either.

Nothing she could say could possibly make Chris understand.

Afterwards, she wasn't sure that she understood either.

……..

Lance drives six hours to see her.

He tells People magazine exactly what he told her.

"Young people do stupid things every day."

Lance will tell the public a lot of things and only half of it would he repeat in private. Lance keeps the secrets he has to keep and they belong to someone else just as often as they belong to him.

He tells People what he said to her. But he never repeats what she says to him in reply.

"Where do you draw the line between just a stupid thing and a cry for help?"

………

She looks at the plus sign and feels unnaturally calm. The first time didn't kill her, even if she'd wanted it to.

She tells Kevin and he handles it with a laid back composure which reminds her that he's done this twice before. He knows, the way she knows, that sometimes even being careful (making it a ritual she couldn't forget) doesn't work. Sometimes, these things happen.

When she tells her mother she's strong enough, finally, to make her own decisions. Two years too late.

Two years has given Justin a successful solo career and a new famous girlfriend that he can parade around the world. Two years has given her several nervous breakdowns and the ability to finally say no to her mother.

It wasn't a fair trade but Justin's always been the lucky one, of the three of them. She doesn't complain though. She isn't sure that Chris has gotten off any better than she has.

……….

She takes her pill religiously every night at eleven-thirty. She'd missed it once and she's never regretted anything more. She heard someone say, once, that most women miscarry their first time around. She wonders if she'd fucked up once before and gotten off lucky before she was even aware.

She wonders, if she had waited, would nature have handled it for her?

She gets headaches every morning from having cried herself to sleep and she tries not to wonder.

………..

Justin tells everyone about them. Every interview he does, it seems, is focused in some part on how she isn't really a virgin. His anger, his bitterness, doesn't seem to fade. He's rubbing it in her face, showing her that what she did hasn't mattered. Everyone's going to know anyway.

She wants to remind him that he isn't telling the whole truth. Reality isn't the picture he's been painting.

She wants to know what he would have done if it had had Chris's dark hair and not their golden brown.

What would he have said to the media then? She'd love to know.

…………

Britney looks at Kevin and thinks that she's as happy as she'll ever get. Even if she's not half as happy as she was before. She looks at Kevin and she knows that she'll never tell him that there was anything more between her and Justin than her and Justin.

There are some secrets you never give up.

Even when they kill you.


End file.
